A Risk-Based, Practice-Centered Approach to Project Management for HPCMP CREATE

The Department of Defense's High Performance Computing Modernization Program Computational Research and Engineering Acquisition Tools and Environments (CREATE) program is developing and deploying multiphysics high-performance computing software applications for engineers to design and make accurate performance predictions for military aircraft, ships, ground vehicles, and radio frequency antennas. When CREATE started (2007), no commonly recognized set of successful software project management practices existed for developing multiphysics, HPC engineering software. Based on lessons learned from the HPC and computational engineering communities, CREATE leadership developed and implemented a risk-based, practice-centered strategy to organize and manage the highly distributed program. This approach led to a good balance between ensuring a sufficiently structured workflow and accountability and providing the flexibility and agility necessary to create new sets of engineering tools with the capabilities needed to design next-generation weapon systems.